2 In William Winterbotham's An Historical, Geographical, Commercial and Philosophical View of the American United States, &c. (London, 1795) there was a discussion of the feasibility of a canal between the Delaware and the Raritan.
In 1862 he published a memoir, Intorno alle strie degli spettri stellari, which indicated the feasibility of a physical classification of the stars; and on the 5th of August 1864 discovered the gaseous composition of comets by submitting to prismatic analysis the light of one then visible.
This result, though widely inaccurate, came much nearer to the truth than any previously obtained; and it instructively illustrated the feasibility of concerted astronomical operations at distant parts of the earth.
Cabot had urged the feasibility of opening an easier channel for trade with the interior of Peru through the river Plate and its tributaries, than that by way of the West Indies and Panama; and now that his views were able to be realized, the interests of the merchants of Seville and of Lima, who had secured a monopoly of the trade by the route of the isthmus, were allowed to destroy the threatened rivalry of that by the river Plate.
